I haven’t read the compleat Niven, but I seem to recall several characters in Known Space all having the same fetish of ripping - destructively, tearing fabric and the like - the underclothes off of their partners as part of foreplay. I considered this a rather odd (and expensive) kink.
Musical fruit!
M-O-O-N spells burpo. 
If they remake The Stand two dozen more times, they will never improve on Bill Fagerbakke as Tom Cullen.
My favorite author is Robert Greene (48 Laws of Power, Art of Seduction, etc.).
In all of his books, his ideas are broken down into “rules”. He then backs up his ideas with examples. I’m annoyed how he frequently references historical material. People buy 48 Laws of Power to get ahead in the workplace, not to understand politics in some castle 500 years ago. And people buy the Art of Seduction to meet women/men at bars, we don’t give a damn how Cleopatra charmed men in 20 BC.
It has nothing to do with the reader (I have Heinlein audiobooks read by three different readers, and have heard many more) – these are WORDS that Heinlein has put in the mouths of his characters. The readers have to say them.
There’s a writing software called Pro Writing Aid. It’s designed, as far as I can tell, to make writers paranoid as hell about every word they write, pointing out excessive adverbs and sentence structure and whether you have too many “glue words” and you can even customize it to flag your own most common pitfalls and all kinds of crazy shit. I started feeling so demoralized about a scene I wrote I finally pulled it out and imported my favorite Stephen King short story, 1408.
Pro Writing Aid didn’t like Stephen King, either.
I felt a hell of a lot better.
- In every book he writes he finds an excuse to refer to a woman’s breasts as “dugs.”
- He takes a hiatus between books and each one is at least five years longer than the last one. At. Least.
GRR Martin, of course.
what irritates me about Micael Connelly in his Mickey Haller books is having the movie references about Haller which of course happened in real life but seems too grand-standing or ego pushing, but unnecessary
That’s such an integral part of what he does, that I’m a bit surprised how these two statements can go together.
Don’t forget Navy Grog and Irish coffee.
Bosch, too. The reason he has his expensive cantilever house is from the proceeds of a movie made about him.
But that was before the Bosch series, so having Haller reference Matthew McConaughey is too much.
Been a while since I read any Heinlein, but I can’t immediately bring to mind any particular verbal tics? The habit of his main character to begin a rebutting speech with an interrogative “So?”, perhaps.
What are examples of the ones that irritate you?
Robert Conroy was another author who had a rape scene in all of his books. He always depicted the rape as a negative event but it was always there.
Margaret Mahy (excellent NZ children’s / YA author) writes short sentences! With exclamation points! Far too frequently!
That’s one of them. Every time someone says it in the audiobook it annoys me.
The nerve!
and also seeing his face on cover like he’s one of the characters in book
And Taylor Anderson is all too fond of having his characters speak “lowly”, rather than “softly” or “quietly”.
Heinlein, as I recall: Variations on, “Uh, further deponent sayeth not.”
Today I donated my GRRM books. I’m not taking up the shelf space for someone who can work on other books but can’t finish his series.